Fang-Yu (Betty) Shen

Fang-Yu (Betty) Shen is a postdoctoral researcher working with Dr. Stephen Dinsmore. She is an ornithologist and quantitative ecologist whose research focuses on understanding how environmental and habitat change influence bird distributions, abundance, and movement.

Her research integrates large-scale bird monitoring data, spatial ecology, and quantitative modeling, with particular expertise in species distribution modeling and hierarchical approaches for analyzing bird populations.

At Iowa State University, Fang-Yu studies the migration ecology of waterbirds and shorebirds, including Pectoral Sandpipers, Dunlin, Ring-billed Gulls, and Herring Gulls. Using movement and migration data, she investigates migration behavior, identifies important stopover and seasonal habitats, and evaluates how habitat availability and environmental change influence migratory movements and habitat use. Her broader research interests include avian ecology, movement ecology, habitat modeling, biodiversity conservation, and the application of large ecological datasets to inform wildlife management and conservation.